1. Field
The following description relates to a fused multiply-add (FMA) apparatus and method, and more particularly, a FMA apparatus and method that are capable of simplifying an FMA.
2. Description of the Related Art
Floating-point units (FPUs) are high-performance units that are capable of processing a is considerable amount of data and are widely used in various fields, for example, computer numerical control, robot control, embedded microprocessor applications, and the like. The demand for a fast, precise fused multiply-add (FMA) technique has steadily grown especially in the fields of wireless communication systems, mobile multimedia systems, three-dimensional (3D) TVs, 3D mobile games, and the like.
An FMA is a floating-point multiply-add operation that is specified in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 754 standard, which is an international standard for floating-point arithmetic. An example of floating-point arithmetic is an operation that computes the product of two floating-point numbers (i.e., B and C) and adds the result of the computation to another floating-point number (i.e., A). Even where not necessary to perform the addition step or the multiplication step, however, in conventional methods the add and multiply operations are always performed during an FMA even when they are unnecessary.